Best game – Germany 2 Brazil 0. The best of the best. Strong, organised, clinical Germany versus fast, expressive, skilful, Brazil.
Best player - Marta. But perhaps she could pass the ball a little more next time.
Best fans - All so good, but possibly Ghana for the singing and the dancing.
Best mascot - England’s panda.
Best prediction - ”Do you want to know who will get the trophy? The winner!” Joseph S. Blatter.
Best headline – “Come on … Brazil?” – from the local sports daily after China had just been utterly humiliated by the South Americans, but in the knowledge that a Brazilian victory against Denmark would all but assure the hosts’ qualification for the next round.
Worst game – Germany 11 Argentina 0. Yes, some of the goals were excellent, but this got the tournament off on completely the wrong foot. Women’s football is not the joke this scoreline suggests.
Worst fans – those who booed the Japanese anthem and players.
Worst pitch – Shanghai’s Hongkou Stadium, before it was relaid just before the final.
Worst organisation – the stuttering re-scheduling of the final group games due to typhoon Wipha.
Worst excuse – “Due to Typhoon Wipha, we change the way to provide press conferences passes” Hangzhou Dragon Stadium.
Worst lunch – the plain, dry, chewy bagguette at Hangzhou’s Dragon Stadium.
Worst aspect of play – goalkeeping (Germany’s clean-sheet-queen Angerer aside). And some disappointing diving from Brazil’s players at times.
Worst idea – perhaps the US decision to drop Hope Solo before crashing out to Brazil or maybe Solo’s own public disgust at the decision which led to her dropping from the entire squad for the third place match?
November 25, 2007 at 9:40 am
We really didnot know of any booying of chinese spectators vs japanese team of of hotility shown. Sad. This was a world cup of a worlwide applauded game, no politics.
The moral condemning of some extra ´diving´by Brazilian players vs the USA. Strange that no commentators said it. But after the harsh, unintelligent and reapeated comments by coach Ryan that brazil girls wouldnt play but hit and tackle his players instead, the south americans were obviously infuriated. And.. in a strategy planned by the coach Barcelos, they began the game in a non-active atitude, just receiving the tackles from the opponents and falling… only to ´demonstrate to the referee WHO was the phisical and hard aggressors! And the calculation worked, both because the americans needed to stop a team superior in skill and because the ref was of course aware of Ryan´s remarks the previous days. So much that Boxx just four minutes before her wrong call had deserved a right call for hit against Cristiane, overlooked by the swiss ref.
Needless to say, practically every US plan by Greg went wrong that day.